Data protection panel report by March, Centre tells SC

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 23

Amid serious concern over leak of biometric details, the Union Government on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that Justice BN Srikrishna Committee report on data protection and cyber security was likely to be ready by March.

Based on the recommendations of Justice Srikrishna panel, a proper law will be put in place, Attorney General KK Venugopal told a five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, which is hearing petitions challenging the validity of the Aadhaar Act and 139 related notifications issued by the government.

The Attorney General’s submission came after senior advocate Shyam Divan contended on behalf of petitioners that there were serious concerns about biometric details of individuals collected by UIDAI getting into the hands of private parties.

“That’s why we persuaded the Attorney General to put it to the government to come up with a law and they responded,” said Justice Chandrachud, prompting Venugopal to say that the report will be out in March.

The Bench — also comprising Justices AK Sikri, AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan – asked Divan to clarify the relationship between security fears and constitutional validity of the law. 

The Bench sought to know whether the Aadhaar number of a person made any difference in a networked world where the data was already available with private entities. “Our personal data is anyway with the private entities. So does interpolation of Aadhaar number make any difference,” the Bench asked Divan.

Divan said the entire architecture of Aadhaar was unconstitutional and it was not fit for a democratic society. “In a welfare state, there are huge points of interaction between an individual and state... You have a complete surveillance state if this is allowed to stand,” he said, adding individuals must have choices.

Divan — who is representing petitioners such as former Karnataka HC judge Justice KS Puttaswamy, several activists Aruna Roy, Shantha Sinha and veteran CPM leader VS Achuthanandan — had earlier submitted the state cannot compel citizens to part with personal information, that too to a private company, as it violated their fundamental rights, including right to privacy.